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March 9, 2010

For the past two or three years, Costco has intrigued me. Every single time I used to pass by one, I noticed the sheer amount of people who are there over the weekend and it got me wondering, "is it worth buying from Costco as opposed to other stores?"

In my opinion, the answer is dependent on how your life is structured. Before I was married, I did not see the need to go out and get a Costco membership (for what reason, I do not know). However, ever since I have been married, my life has become more organized and planned out in the sense that now I plan out what needs to be bought and when I will need to buy it by. Even when it was just my wife and I, we still did not see the need for a Costco membership until my wife became pregnant.

When we were one month away from the delivery date, we looked hard at what we would need once the baby was here and what we found was that there is a lot of things that Costco sells which we could buy and get it cheaper (over the long term) if bought in bulk. Therefore, we decided to get ourselves a Costco membership.

Once we were at Costco to get the membership, the question arose as to which membership would be get: would it be the standard Gold Star membership for $55 or get the Executive membership for $100? The difference is that with the Executive membership you receive 2% cash back (up to $500). I still was not convinced until the woman at the Membership Services counter told me that if you pay the extra $45 and you do not earn $45 in cash back, the $45 is refunded back to you so you would end up paying for a Gold membership instead. So I was thinking that if this lady was correct, it pretty much meant that I was guaranteed not to waste the extra $45 if I did not get the value for it, which I thought was a good offer and so I signed up for the Executive membership back in October 2009 and have been visiting Costco almost every two weeks to purchase the many items required for our daily living.

In closing, all I have to say is I love Costco and I love the savings (especially if the item is on sale, which deepens the savings even further!). For me, it is worth spending the $100 to get the Executive membership and even if you do not see the benefit in it, paying $55 for the Gold Star membership will pay off with the money you save by buying in bulk.